Corrie Mizusawa had her college years all planned out.
The Lafayette, Calif., native wanted to stay close to home for college, so after one campus visit, she decided to attend Saint Mary’s, just a 15 minute drive through the hills from her family home.
After earning the West Coast Conference Freshman of the Year award with the Gaels and garnering national attention for herself with a 13-point, 11-assist performance in a second-round NCAA Tournament loss to Tennessee, something wasn’t right when Mizusawa returned for her sophomore season.
“I wanted to go to a bigger program,” the 21-year-old said. “Saint Mary’s is a private Catholic school; obviously athletics isn’t that much of a priority. And I didn’t really get along with the coaches very well. I had some issues with them.”
On Dec. 30, 2001, after a 62-58 preseason loss to Marquette, Mizusawa left the Saint Mary’s program and announced her intention to transfer.
Immediately, the 5-foot-8 point guard decided she would go to California. A Pacific-10 Conference team, the Golden Bears would offer Mizusawa a bigger program and still be close to home. She was going to transfer during the winter break so that she could be eligible to play beginning the following winter.
“I didn’t think I’d have as many options as I did,” Mizusawa said. “All of the sudden, all these schools were interested and I was just like, ‘Oh wow, OK, I’m not going to go to Cal, I’ve got to think it through.’”
Another sign for Mizusawa that the Golden Bears weren’t right for her was that the California coaches intended for her to split time playing point guard and the two-guard position.
That worked out well for Oregon. When head coach Bev Smith received a fax saying the Ducks were a school that Mizusawa might be interested in playing for, the program went to work looking at tapes and talking to her coaches and others
in the WCC.
“We just felt that she was a strong leader, a great basketball player and a very, very good student,” Smith said. “A good character for our program.”
Throughout the preseason, Smith raved about Mizusawa’s old-school point guard style. Mizusawa tied a school record with 14 assists in Oregon’s Nov. 25 victory at Gonzaga, a little more than a week after Mizusawa missed the record by one in a victory against Valparaiso.
But that point guard part of Mizusawa almost passed up Oregon for Temple University in Pennsylvania.
“It came between Oregon and Temple,” Mizusawa said. “Because their head coach is Dawn Staley. She’s the best point guard to ever play women’s basketball.”
Oregon won out in part because it wasn’t a long flight away, making it easier for Mizusawa’s family to attend her games.
“My mom has every tape of high school and college,” Mizusawa said. “She has over 120 tapes.”
Her mother still attends every game that Mizusawa plays in, while her older brother Jarrod Mizusawa joins for the trips to Eugene.
Her brother and Carrie Mizusawa, her older sister, are a part of Corrie Mizusawa’s basketball development.
Somewhat out of necessity, her love for basketball started at a young age. With siblings who played basketball, Mizusawa has had a ball in her hands since she was two but didn’t start playing the game in a team-oriented setting until elementary school.
Things are a bit different on the college court than the elementary school one.
“She’s our leader,” teammate Chelsea Wagner said. “We don’t really have to worry about Corrie, she does her jobs so well that we just need to worry about our jobs. We’ve looked to her a lot to help carry the team, and she’s done a great job.”
Wagner transferred from Hawaii after her freshman year. She and Mizusawa lived together last year, both spending the year as redshirts to meet transfer requirements.
While Wagner, a Springfield native, transferred partly to be closer to home, Mizusawa’s choice of Oregon wasn’t solely for the basketball program.
“I love this school,” Mizusawa said. “Even if I wasn’t playing basketball here, this is a school I would want to go to for the environment and the drive to win in all sports.”
Now her remaining college days are planned out: Play basketball at Oregon and graduate as an education major. But what follows that isn’t so easy to predict.
“Obviously, if I have an opportunity to play basketball after Oregon, I’ll definitely do that,” Mizusawa said. “But eventually I’m going to go back to California, get a job, probably teaching. I’ll probably coach at some point. I’m not quite sure.”